Blow biography

European description of the form appearance and behavior. A medium-sized herbal heron red-brown-brown color; The length of the body is 70-80 cm, of which about half falls on the head and neck, the mass is 1 gram, the wingspan-see a little smaller heron and looks much more dense and stocky, especially because of the habit of holding the head in his shoulders, while the neck seems short and thick.

The paws are also relatively short, but with very long and strong fingers. It is extremely secretive, usually holds in dense reed or willow thickets, extremely rarely caught my eyes, most often it can be seen flying. The flight, like everyone's heron, is light and leisurely. In the thickets, it is masked so skillfully that a hidden bobber cannot be noticed literally two steps. In the “Grounding Pose” stretches the head and neck vertically up and sways to the beat of the movements of the surrounding thickets.

Active around the clock, but is especially revived at dusk. The coloring is sandy reddish, all the plumage is dotted with numerous small dark settles, which form longitudinal stripes on the bottom of the neck. The legs are green, the beak is yellowish, the eyes are light brown or yellow. In the flight, it is noticeable that the flying feathers are dark red with wide black stripes.

Young birds in color are similar to adults, only dull ones. The chicks before the appearance of feathers are covered with thick reddish fluff. The voice is peculiar: in the spring and early summer, males denote their presence in the thickets with a low, booming two-complicated hugs: “U-Nummb”. In quiet weather, this sound spreads several kilometers. More often it can be heard at night, but birds often shout during the day.

The current male makes this sound, strongly fanning his neck. In flight, especially at night, often emits a hoarse “Hau”, resembling some signals of gray heron. Distribution, status. Widely widespread in Eurasia and Africa. In Russia, it nests from the western borders to Yakutia and Sakhalin. In the south, near the Black Sea and Azov coast, it can winter.

Due to specific habitats, it is uneven and almost nowhere is numerous. Winters in the Mediterranean, Africa and in the south of Asia.

Part of the birds under favorable conditions remains to winter on the coast of the Black and Caspian Seas. Life. The most typical habitat of the species are extensive reed thickets in large ponds - lakes, reservoirs and desalinated sea bays. It also settles on the river old men overgrown with reed and willow bushes and overgrown careers, vast areas of open water are not required.

It is settled by separate pairs, but sometimes two or three males are currently not far from each other. There is evidence that several females can hold on a section of one male and even there are several nests. The nest is a bunch of randomly piled dry vegetation, usually reed stems in the depths of thickets, reliably hiding it from all sides, but is not covered from above.

The base of the nest is almost always in water and is surrounded by water, most often quite deep. There are 4-6 eggs of light, brownish-olive color in the masonry. The masonry is mainly a female. The chicks, as soon as they get stronger slightly, are selected from the nest and who are swimming, who scared around the stems, hide in the surrounding thickets, and when the danger passes, they return back.

It flies to the nesting sites very early, often even when there is a lot of snow around, and the ice did not completely melt on the ponds. Accordingly, it flies to the wintering late. Finds of individual wintering birds in the middle lane are possible near large non -freezing reservoirs. Feed, like other herons, are almost any animals of a suitable size - fish, rodents, frogs, large insects and the like.

Back, or Big Back Botaurus Stellaris, other types of this family:.